Fine sounds like ants gnawing through leaves crept outward, and everyone only had time to scramble back and throw themselves to the ground before in the next instant a piercing wind-shriek expanded rapidly in all directions, centered on the woman. Close behind came black flames that seemed to devour everything. The fire spread around the edges of the massive pit, then rose upward and converged into a blazing dome that blotted out the sky. Roiling waves of heat surged and churned in all directions — the very image of hell.

Perhaps a very long time passed, or perhaps it was but a single moment.

Xiao Nanhui, in the midst of the ringing in her ears and her dizziness, struggled painfully to open her eyes. A familiar face came into view. The flames and wind blades seemed to be held back by an invisible wall, crashing wildly against it in the space surrounding him, stirring his black hair into disarray.

His pupils were wide open, blood seeping from the corners of his eyes, yet his expression was still calm.

She looked at those bloodstained eyes, and the thousand resentments and accusations she had been ready to give dissolved on the spot. She pushed herself up and threw her arms around him tightly.

“Why didn’t you wait for me to come back?”

He looked at her quietly, and after a long while did nothing more than raise his hand and gently brush the disheveled hair from beside her ear.

“But you came, didn’t you?”

Both anxious and agitated, her voice had gone somewhat hoarse.

“I gave up everything — I didn’t even keep Jixiang — to come see you, and all you have to say to me is this?”

He said nothing. His expression carried what seemed like ten thousand layers of exhaustion.

The things the Qu Family Elder had delivered on his behalf — why hadn’t he given them to her himself? Why had he not even left her the chance to say goodbye? He had said that she must never leave him. Then why had he chosen to go first?

She still had so many, many questions she wanted — needed — to ask him. But she had no time left now.

She hurried to wipe the tears just rising to the corners of her eyes, and with effort rose to retrieve the Jiějia sword that had fallen to one side.

“Don’t deceive me again. Can we leave this place together?”

He said nothing. Only his breathing rose and fell lightly at her ear — as tender as a breath of spring wandering into the deep of autumn.

Her hands paused. Her eyes, which she had just dried, turned red again.

“Why won’t you speak? Why won’t you say you’ll leave with me—”

He still said nothing. His lips fell gently to the side of her face, taking away the last tear.

She froze. By the time she came to her senses, something hard had appeared in her palm.

One by one — hard, still carrying his warmth.

In the next instant, a pale-blue, purplish hand pierced through the turbulent flames and from behind seized him by the throat. A face drew up close.

“So you have finally dropped your act of pretending to be dead.”

That countenance no longer bore much resemblance to Bai Yaoguan. It was blue-purple and mottled, bloated and decaying, dark energy scattered all about — like a demon crawled out of the underworld.

“You only have this much ability? Don’t put on airs with me. When we were at Chizhou, you were far more useful than this.”

Faced with such a terrifying scene, the man’s delicate, handsome features only creased faintly with the sensation of suffocation.

“Rising intention, every thought a peril. These eight words are carved into my very bones. As long as I do not stir my intention, nothing will happen.”

“What a fine ‘rising intention, every thought a peril.’ Then let me reach in and see your heart for myself.”

The wrist, skeletal as dry bones, lifted him single-handed with effortless ease. The other hand rose — five fingers spread — and lunged toward the man’s chest.

Xiao Nanhui’s pupils contracted, her heart giving a violent lurch.

“No!”

She heard herself let out a wrenching cry. She struggled to get closer, only to be casually knocked aside.

The woman’s laughter welled up amid all the rest, filled with a kind of indescribable sickness.

When she had laughed enough, she finally stopped. Then in an abrupt motion she withdrew her hand — bringing with her a small piece of bloodied flesh from the man’s body. Blood dripped in drops from the raw, mangled wound, and in an instant turned the emerald-green jade seal beneath her feet crimson.

Glancing to the side, she looked at the woman in the dirt struggling to crawl toward the copper sword not far away.

“What’s the hurry? He won’t die.”

She lightly raised her hand to her lips, extended her tongue to lap at the sweet and metallic taste upon it, and closed her eyes in languid satisfaction.

“Such precious blood and flesh — learning Buddhism, chanting sutras — what a waste.”

The air around the man began to distort and tremble. Blood no longer dripped from the wound, instead becoming thin threads of blood stretching upward into the air. Pain made cold sweat bead at his temple, wetting his black brows and eyes. He pressed his pale lips together.

“What is sealed within the secret seal — you will not know. When greed arises, it always brings self-harm. You will regret this.”

Click — the outer mechanism encasing the emerald broke apart into two halves. A gentle green light emerged from deep within the four-sided jade seal.

“Regret? What ignorance, that mortals dare speak such things to me. The Qiu Family dug their own graves — they clearly could have wielded the gods to rule the world, yet threw it all away. Now I need only open the seal, and ten thousand divine beings will be with me. There is no one under heaven who can stand against me. Ten thousand blood and flesh to feed upon — and I will gain eternal life!”

A brief stillness hung in the air. The young emperor finally slowly raised his head, his gaze holding a near-expressionless and lofty indifference.

“Should I die, there will be no one to serve as your vessel. I wonder then where your ten thousand divine beings would find a place to reside?”

Xiao Nanhui looked down at her waist. Her dagger had disappeared at some point. She looked up, bewildered.

No. She could not go through this kind of scene again. She would not.

Jiějia flew out, clanging as it struck away the dagger in the man’s hand.

The full-faced woman burst into laughter toward the sky.

“Wumi thought himself clever, yet he underestimated the human heart. This is the pettiness of mortals, the cowardice of mortals, the short-sightedness of mortals, the utter fragility of mortals!” The gurgling sound came from deep in her throat as she laughed. She picked up the jade seal with one hand and with the other dragged the barely-conscious man toward the center of the great pit. “Now you no longer even have the chance to seek death. You have lost.”

The sound of staggering footsteps came from behind. She did not turn her head — only waved her hand, and the figure behind her flew out like a broken kite.

This happened several times in succession. Then the woman finally seized hold of her leg.

She kicked her, stomped on her — yet the woman held on for dear life and would not let go.

Xiao Nanhui clung with her whole body to the figure beneath her, vowing to twist every bone and every vein into rope to bind the other person fast.

“You couldn’t hold on to your adoptive father back then, and now you can’t hold on to him either. Nothing but flesh and bone — and you think you can restrain me? What a dream.”

The sarira crushed hard against her palm bones, like something that would press itself into her bones entirely.

She could no longer hold on to him. But she could set him free.

The blood-soaked woman poured every last ounce of strength she had left into raising the blade in her hand.

Jiějia became a streak of white light, and in an instant pierced through both her and the woman’s bodies together.

The white blade entered through the other party’s chest and emerged from her own back. Seen from afar, two figures overlapped as one — impossible to tell which was which.

“You said it yourself — the altar cannot hold two people.”

The woman run through by the blade seemed to understand something at last, and struggled desperately. The sound of ribcage scraping against the blade was grating in her ears.

“Let go!”

Xiao Nanhui laughed. Though she coughed blood even as she laughed, the laughter was more free and unburdened than it had ever been before.

“You call yourself a god yet you fear annihilation. And what of a mortal body?” She spat fiercely on the other party’s face. “I spit upon your immortality.”

Her heavy eyelids slowly fell closed. She still gripped the hilt tightly, dragging that other body along with her, and slowly fell together toward the center of the deep pit.

“Let us go to hell together.”

Falling, and endless falling.

Violent pain swept from the back of her neck throughout her whole body. She felt her skull was about to split open from within.

Countless shadows crawled out from the darkness. Howling spirits and towering divine beings surged toward her from all directions. Countless people’s love, hatred, desire, and longing, their vows and prayers spanning a thousand hundred years, swallowed her like a tide.

She saw countless eyes, countless mouths, countless faces, countless figures. Those figures competed to rush at her, to pierce through her, to possess her.

She became many people, and yet somehow felt as if she herself was the aggregate of all those people. She began to forget her own face, forget her own name, forget the reason she had come here…

Suddenly, a faint, indistinct cool fragrance drifted past her nostrils. Then a force took hold of her left hand and dragged her toward the silence.

She opened her eyes to find herself standing atop a high building.

All around was still and windless. In the distance, rosy sunset clouds blazed like fire as the sun sank low. She looked down at her own long shadow, and when she raised her head again, a woman was standing before her — she did not know when she had arrived.

“You have come.”

She looked at the other party coldly.

“Who are you?”

The woman did not answer, only walked toward her.

She glanced around again at the scene, which appeared frozen as if time had stopped, and arrived at a certain conclusion.

“This is a dream. You are a prophet of the Zhong Li clan.”

The woman stopped walking — but then shook her head.

“This is not a dream. These are your memories.”

Her memories? When had she ever had such memories? What she knew was that divine beings never retained such ordinary memories.

“Even if what you say is true, these memories have nothing special about them.”

With that, she turned to leave.

The woman behind her did not follow. She walked along the long corridor ahead, but turning the next corner, she saw the other woman again.

She said nothing, stepped past the woman, and continued forward — only to encounter her once more after the next turn.

The woman gently took hold of the hem of her garment.

“As long as you still have him in your heart, you will always come back here.”

She turned her head, furrowing her brows.

“Who is he?”

“Have you forgotten him? You love him. He is the most important person in your life.”

She shook off the other party’s hand. When she spoke again, there was a kind of near-numb indifference.

“I have seen too many people. Passing through, being born and dying, at the very least in the tens of millions. How could I remember which one he is?”

The woman shook her head again.

“No. You just turned twenty-one. You have not seen many people. He is the most special of all the people you have seen. You certainly remember him.”

She looked out beyond the balustrade, took a few swift paces toward it as if to flip over the railing and go, but the woman suddenly lunged from behind and held on to her without regard.

She turned in fury and sent a palm strike — the woman neither dodged nor deflected, but took the hit directly. Her other hand, though, kept reaching up, working to pry her fingers open, drawing something on her palm.

She seemed to be writing characters. Two horizontal strokes, one vertical, one left-falling stroke, one right-falling stroke.

She had no intention of looking at those characters. She only wanted to leave from here.

“Let go.”

The other party paid no attention, still doing the same thing.

She pushed violently to throw the other party off. But the woman seemed to feel no pain and could not be shaken off no matter what. She only repeated the same action over and over, tracing that same character on her palm.

Two horizontals, one vertical, one left-falling stroke, one right-falling stroke. Two horizontals, one vertical, one left-falling stroke, one right-falling stroke…

“Let go! Stop writing! I told you to stop writing—”

She roared in an uncontrolled frenzy.

Suddenly, something flashed through her mind.

A brush, a hand, a dot of red.

She closed her eyes and beat wildly at her own head, wanting to make the uncontrollable flood of images vanish. But those images only grew clearer.

A brush dipped in cinnabar, a hand wearing Buddhist beads, a dot of red falling on her palm.

Two horizontals, one vertical. One left-falling stroke, one right-falling stroke.

“Our name. Have you committed it to memory?”

Whose voice was this? Who was speaking?

The image in her mind shifted again. Amid the wilderness at dawn, a figure was turning toward her out of the wind and sand, backlit.

“Xiao Nanhui — are you afraid of me?”

The wind tore away that person’s hair ribbon. Without thinking, she reached out her hand to catch it, but a single finger came to rest on her chest instead.

“Here — this is the most complex thing in the world.”

In the dim great hall, she saw a familiar yet unfamiliar face drawing slowly closer. She had nowhere to run, nowhere to hide.

Between one breath and the next, something drew even nearer. She could feel his warmth burning in the darkness.

“If love is difficult to begin, then let hatred serve. It will do.”

The dark night continued to spread. She was in a close and suffocating embrace, and a cool, clear scent dispersed the fragrance of old wisteria.

“Xiao Nanhui — in this life and in all lives, you may never leave me. And I will never leave you.”

No. This was not real. These were not her memories. This was not her.

But if she was not herself, then who was she?

Her five fingers clenched hard. That woman who had been writing and all the tumultuous visions finally stilled.

She left that tower as she had wished, but the thousands upon thousands of crying, clamouring faces that had been so loud went quiet. And then, in those tens of millions of figures, she saw him.

Everything stopped. She walked slowly toward the end…

Xiao Nanhui slowly opened her eyes.

The wind-cry had ceased. The black flames had disappeared.

Bai Yaoguan’s body lay not far away. Ding Weixiang and Yikong were lying flat a hundred paces away, their fates unknown.

She sat up with an expressionless face, seeming to require tremendous effort just to stand, and then moved forward with stiff and rigid steps. Every tendon and muscle in her body was trembling.

At the edge of the deep pit, the white-clad physician who had been cowering there raised his head weakly. He looked at the familiar yet unfamiliar figure, and a confusion and fear gradually rose in his eyes.

“Xiao — Xiao Nanhui?”

The figure did not answer and continued moving like a walking shell toward the ruins of the stone tower, then before long stood back up and made its way back.

At last, she stopped. She stood before the man who had lost consciousness from his wounds.

The tears in her eyes had long since dried out, and the widened pupils seemed to have lost their focus.

She slowly opened her left hand. That string of Buddhist beads lay quietly in her palm.

Something in the depths of her eyes began to dissolve and spread. She blinked, and light finally returned to her eyes once more.

Xiao Nanhui gently slipped the beads back onto Su Wei’s hand, then gently bent down over him, opening her mouth soundlessly.

She seemed to have made no sound — or perhaps she had made a sound and could not hear it herself.

When she was setting out once more on the road to Huozhou, she had asked him whether he regretted not having killed her.

His answer had been: some answers take a very long time to know.

She had felt at the time that this answer was a deflection. But only now did she understand what “a very long time” meant.

Some answers can only be known after walking through an entire life.

On her twentieth birthday, she met him. From then on, her life had taken an entirely different shape.

If someone were to ask her: do you regret having met him?

Her answer, too, had only become gradually clear and certain at this very moment.

She had never regretted meeting him.

If time could flow backward, and the wind again stirred the prayer flags hanging in the great hall of Yongye Temple, she would still be willing to take that divination slip from those hands.

She had never regretted it.

Even if he was to be the ending written into her fate, she had never regretted it.

She drew from inside her robes the black demon-subduing pestle, raised it gently, then brought it down with all her strength.

“Don’t be afraid. I will protect you forever.”

In the dust, the green-jade seal, so vivid and translucent it seemed to hold a living spirit within, suddenly became dull and ordinary in an instant — like nothing more than the most ordinary stone.

The wind scattered the dark clouds. In the moment before dawn, heaven and earth were utterly still.